The vision of a revamped Champions' League with well-ordered financial arrangements and happy participants moved closer but remained incomplete after yesterday's meeting of UEFA's European Club 2000 task force.
What is clear is that the smaller clubs will earn considerably less than the giants of the European game if yesterday's proposals are adopted.
Some £261 million, representing 75 per cent of the £348 million being promised by UEFA, will be distributed to the participating clubs. But at UEFA's insistence five per cent of that figure will go to their leagues for the development and education of young players. In addition three per cent of the remaining £87 million will be distributed by UEFA among the leagues of the non-participating clubs for the same purpose.
But at less than £3 million this is a paltry amount to share among an estimated 35 leagues. The rest of UEFA's 25 per cent share is earmarked to pay direct costs, agency fees and contributions to the national member associations.
While the bigger clubs will continue to grow, the remainder will struggle to keep pace unless they can transform their television "market value", one of the two factors to be used by UEFA in calculating the division of wealth.
This means that clubs from Italy, Germany, Spain and England will claim the lion's share. The other factor is merit and clubs will be rewarded on a payment per-match basis which will make success a lucrative business.
The gathering, designed to prepare proposals for UEFA's executive committee meeting in Lausanne on December 10th-11th, satisfied the English Premiership's chief executive Peter Leaver and UEFA's general secretary Gerhard Aigner.
"It is slow but steady. I think we are getting there," said Leaver. "It was a fruitful meeting," said Aigner. Teams who narrowly fail to qualify as one of the initial maximum of four per nation for the Champions' League might find themselves in the revamped 96-club UEFA Cup. That is being planned as a knock-out competition and clubs reaching the quarter-finals will guarantee their national league an additional entry the following season.
